Re: Invitation to Co-Sign Letter to IEEE Election Candidates regarding ISTO
Mark:
I believe that your reply misses the point. What ISTO is doing (in your
terms) is:
"On one end of the spectrum would be a standard that was purely an issue of
achieving consensus as quickly as possible among a clearly defined group of
industrial partners with no issues of correctness or impact outside the
agreeing participants"
without consensus of "all interested parties". They limit the parties and
they don't achieve consensus. How to provide access to "all interested
parties" and the minimum requirements to achieve "consensus" are rooted in
the procedures of the IEEE-SA and are derived from the accreditation
requirements from ANSI.
Folks who wish to cut an agreement, any sort of an agreement can do so, but
that is not a standard in the sense above. It is a "specification", more
properly in standards terms it is a "Publicly Available Specification" (PAS).
The issue here is IF an organization produces accredited standards
AND
If the same organization produces "Publicly Available Specifications"
Under the same logo/banner/brand mark
AND
Does not sufficiently distinguish between the two
Then the result will be:
1) Loss of respect for standards produced under the traditional
method due to destruction of the brand integrity.
2) The danger of loss of accreditation to the formulating
organization for failure to adequately distinguish between the two.
There is a simple way out.
Don't call them "standards", call them "specifications".
Some of the world's great standards started out as publicly available
specifications. Examples: HP-IB became IEEE-488 and (DEC-Intel-Xerox)
Ethernet became IEEE 802.3.
Geoff Thompson
At 10:48 AM 10/11/00 -0700, Prof. Mark P. Haselkorn wrote:
>Roger,
>I believe there are different types of standards that require different
>types of handling. On one end of the spectrum would be a standard that
>was purely an issue of achieving consensus as quickly as possible among a
>clearly defined group of industrial partners with no issues of correctness
>or impact outside the agreeing participants (I'm not sure such a pure
>standard exists, but I'm laying out the extremes). On the other end of
>the spectrum is a standard that has to conform with reality and consider
>impacts beyond the participants. For example, it would be very wrong for
>a group of pajama manufacturers to declare a standard for "inflammable"
>that had nothing to do with whether or not the garment could catch
>fire. The more a standard is on the first side of the spectrum, the
>greater role I believe ISTO can play. The more it is on the second side
>of the spectrum, the more IEEE needs to guard that ISTO does not make
>standards for the convenience and profit of industrial partners without
>regard to the greater realities of the situation and the impact on
>non-participating parties. If this were allowed to happen, IEEE would be
>failing in its central mission of benefiting society.
>Am I making my position clear?
>Mark
>
>*****************************************************************************
>Mark P. Haselkorn
>Professor and Founding Chair
>Department of Technical Communication
>Principle Investigator, National Research Council Project on
> Lessons from Y2K for Strategic Management of IT
>IEEE Technical Activities Strategic Planning Committee
>Box 352195
>University of Washington
>Seattle, WA 98195
>(206) 543-2577; (206) 543-8858 (fax)